New Moon Review
TL;DR Version: I don't even know, you guys. I just...urgh. If you actually liked the book, you'll like the movie, it was a spot on interpretation. Which, made me not like it.
Twilight II: NEW MOON ZOMG!
Spoiler-Free (aside from what I knew going into the movie):
Look, I hate the Twilight books. I'm not talking flames on the side of my face, but I made several frustrated growls while reading them. But, that's all a rant for another post.
No matter how I feel about the books, I feel like it's important to remember that the movie is not a book, it's a movie. So, here was me trying to go to see it. I was pleasantly surprised by the first movie, as it spared us all the horrible writing in the books and was just an unmotivated romance story that somehow turned into an epic vampire fight (Alice doing ballet-what-nots before ripping off hippie-hair vampire's head? Awesome). Granted, the pitiful dialogue was still in the movie. As far as I had expected, that pitiful dialogue would be in this movie as well.
I knew they were showing Edward's face when he talked Bella out of motorcycle suicide, as opposed to just his voice (because audience members won't understaaaaand otherwise). I was told that the blank pages of months passing would be replaced by a window montage*. I heard that the fursplosions were non-cheesey (not in terms of story, like, the CGI you guys)**. These were all basic things I either saw from trailers or heard from those who saw early premieres.
And so I walked into the theatre with this in mind, and my posse and I sat and waited. We played "Previously on Twilight:" in order to recap everything we could remember from the first movie for the sake of understanding the continuity from the audience perspective. We listened to cougars behind us talk about Opra, SMeyer, and OMGSHIRTLESSJACOBSQUEE. We noted that, really, every Twihard in the theater had a Blackberry or iPhone and, upon quick peeking, I noticed they were Tweeting anticipation (really, kids? You can't just, you know, share the experience with the people you're with?!). I pondered if they would Tweet the movie (short answer: one girl did, two rows in front of us. And, she slouched down really low to try to hide the glare of the screen). And then, an hour before showtime, half my posse and I got reckless and we went on a mission to buy a magazine, that ended up just being a walk around downtown to stretch our legs and a strategic pee-break before the bathrooms exploded into maximum capacity RIGHT BEFORE THE SHOW (as they always do).
I also began texting Ashley and Dinah before the show. Dinah was at a different Twilight premiere, and sported her Team Shovel shirt. Personally, I thought it meant to just bury "the spare". Bludgeoning worked exceptionally well too, though.
And then the greatest thing happened; the lights dimmed, the projector started rolling, we covered our ears, and a defening scream came from the audience...that stopped slowly in a pathetic dwindle-out, "Oh, wait, that's not the movie...shit, let's pretend we were excited for the Lovely Bones trailer. Woooo?" I laughed.
I laughed harder still when the actual movie started and the girls were clueless about such ("Wait, is this it? I CAN'T TELL BECAUSE YOU CHANGED THE SOUNDTRACK AND THE FILTER! NO MOAR BLUUUUUUUE!").
AND THEN THE MOVIE STARTED...
Time out: maybe you're like me, where you click a cut tag without reading it because you're like "OOH! GIFS?" So, let me clarify: THESE SEAS BE FULL OF SPOILING MONSTERS.
I know I generally try to be spoiler-free, but I really feel like there's no way to give this movie a justified review without them, so srry2say, I won't be doing this the polite way with discretion, so here's your warning:
THIS IS THE REALLY SPOILER-Y PART, YOU GUISE. THIS IS WHERE I ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE AND WHAT HAPPENS IN IT.
Okay, now that we're clear, time in:
Spoiler-ridden bits from the stars above:
*Which, I was all like "YESSS, VISUALS ROCK." until I saw it, and then I was all like "NOOO, NOW I'M FREAKING DIZZY." And then it just kept going, reassuring the audience that the camera [and the world] REVOLVE around Bella.
**Which, I think I would have been happier with them without being told that, as my expectations obv. became too high.
The screen is dark, and a full moon appears. A shadow comes across the moon and begins moving across its face, to show the cycle of the moon in a month. As the shadow casts, the title appears within the shadow, until the moon is nothing, or as the calender says, a "New"- O I C WUT U DID THAR!
And so my giggling begins. Also, if the lovely couple that was sitting next to me ever happens to read this, I'd just like to say I'm sorry for the compulsive giggling and occasional snort, and would like to thank you for just, you know, going with it. You rocked. For reals.
Anyway, the unmotivated romance romances on, and Edward brood-loves with all his might, and somewhere Volvo is saying, "Wait! The logo! Film the LOGO!" The previous blue filter has been taken away, and replaced with woozy camera of motion sickness. It was like Blair Witch, but the cameras were steady, somehow making the nausiated feeling worse. When it finally stopped, it was to allow the SYMBOLISM VAMPIRE BASEBALL BAT to beat us over the head with Romeo and Juliet. Foreshadowing? What's that? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. OH! LOOK! There's Taylor Lautner giving Edward the possessive/crazy eyes! You know, the ones that say "She's mine, she just doesn't know it yet"? Yeah, those.
So then Awesome Alice throws Bella a birthday party where Emo-Control Jasper literally forces her into being happy about it, until she paper-cuts herself into warm-blooded murder, and Jasper gets the noms for her sweet, sweet blood. Edward writes a song on his guitar (off-screen and not for your hearing) that goes something like "I'm so old that I ran out of self-esteem and I want to eat my girlfriend, so I'm going to dump her and move away so we can both be miserable for all of my sparkly eternity and I'll tell her so the day after her birthdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay." Or something like that. Then Edward takes forever to say goodbye to Bella and make extreme moping, and Bella goes calling for him sounding like a seagull in Finding Nemo until she gives up and takes a woodsy nap. You know, just like the book. Then Wolfy McWereson finds her, carries her back, and the rest is (as they say) suicide missions to hallucinate the boyfriend that left her while she strings along her "best friend" until Sparkles descides to kill himself (death by sparkling, not making that up) and she can save him so his ass can get kicked by a dotty old wizard vampire...lord...thing. Totes just history there, right? Like, the Shakespeare kind? I don't even know.
Look, I'd try to make it sound more dignified than that, but we all know it can't be done.
Somewhere in there, Bella makes an attempt to be social AND catatonic, because girls are just plain good at multi-tasking. So, she calls up Jessica. Now, this is really imporatant to me because Jessica is my favorite part. Always. There's something to be said for the brilliance of Anna Kendrick, especially since she's probably the only thing that makes Camp worth watching (I will hold my blasphemous tongue later, Mr. Sondheim). She was obviously my favorite part of the first movie because she was able to add depth and believability to the character Jessica (or Jessiren, as the translation to script may have made her) that just wasn't present in the book because, obviously, if it isn't about Bella, it's not worth the readers' time (I digress). The point is, she's comedically brilliant with her "That's Edward Cullen...don't even try. Like, don't waste your time..." with that look of "I know from experience". And, I'd just like to say, she did NOT disappoint. If you watch no other part of this movie, watch the "girls night out" and just listen to her in the background of Bella's hallucinations. This is where most of my snorting occured.
Well, and when we saw the painting of Carlisle with the Volturi (for backstory purposes, of course) because, did you know, this movie wants to be Harry Potter just so darn bad it hurts? It's true. I thought we had blasted to Hogwarts.
Wait, I meant to talk about Carlisle here because I was very disappointed by my lack of lulz. I specifically remember his entrance in Twilight being all like "I know I'm gorgeous. And I can kill you. I win at everything," and then proceeding to be daddy!Lestat with all of his mugs for the rest of the film. Here, he was kind of like pitiful Louis (especially in the scene where he's repairing Bella in his office after the curious incident of JASPER NOM and we see the paintings of TORTURED VAMPIRE SOULLESS ART). It disturbed me, though not nearly so much as the cougars behind me screaming when Jacob took off his shirt, and swooning every time he was shirtless on camera. I swear to all things holy, they were the loudest screamers. Also, I'm not lost on the concept that cougars are apparently hunting wolves. And okay, to be fair, it's not really the movie's fault that the audience was full of creepers.
On to the Volturi. Uhm...I liked them. I mean, Aro was completely insane and that was great, and I was orginally very skeptical of him. I mean, the promotional pictures were all so airbrushed, he looked like a Tolkien Elf, and that just wasn't okay. The movie didn't have airbrushing, and he looked more like, well, a vampire lord. And Jane. Sweet Jane. White stockings and all. That's really all I know what to say about her face-so-cute-I-want-to-pinch-her-cheeks-even-while-she-Crucios-Edward-ness. The Volturi fight scenes were possibly better than the Wolf fight scenes, but, only because they didn't try to make knocking-over-the-camera an effect. Look, Weitz, I think I get what you're going for. It's like the audience is actually in the movie watching everything that's going on, like it's Brecht on film, right? Is that it? I really hope it's that and not "naw, I just thought it'd be nifty" because, I can get behind the Brecht thing. Kind of. Well, except it wasn't covered anywhere else in the willing suspention of disbelief so, it was just out of place. And cheesey. And...dizzying. Again. Stop that. Okay, maybe I can't get behind that either.
[ETA: I can't believe I forgot this.
THE EVERY END OF THE MOVIE:
Edward: [I'll change you] on one condition. (Dramatic pause. Dramatic pause. Dramatic pause.) Marry me.
Bella: *gasp*
Screen: *cuts to black* (Dramatic pause) *roll credits*
Me: *starts laughing. loudly*
Posse: WTF, Aelf?
Me: THEY'RE TRYING TO BE TRUE BLOOD.
Posse: *starts laughing. loudly*]
But, hey, the movie was all kinds of redic. true to SMeyer's novels. You know, for what it's worth.
THE END.
[ETA: (EPILOGUE TO ADD. IT WORKS)
FROM pippie_poppins, a FOR YOUR TIME GIF:
AND
Twilight II: NEW MOON ZOMG!
Spoiler-Free (aside from what I knew going into the movie):
Look, I hate the Twilight books. I'm not talking flames on the side of my face, but I made several frustrated growls while reading them. But, that's all a rant for another post.
No matter how I feel about the books, I feel like it's important to remember that the movie is not a book, it's a movie. So, here was me trying to go to see it. I was pleasantly surprised by the first movie, as it spared us all the horrible writing in the books and was just an unmotivated romance story that somehow turned into an epic vampire fight (Alice doing ballet-what-nots before ripping off hippie-hair vampire's head? Awesome). Granted, the pitiful dialogue was still in the movie. As far as I had expected, that pitiful dialogue would be in this movie as well.
I knew they were showing Edward's face when he talked Bella out of motorcycle suicide, as opposed to just his voice (because audience members won't understaaaaand otherwise). I was told that the blank pages of months passing would be replaced by a window montage*. I heard that the fursplosions were non-cheesey (not in terms of story, like, the CGI you guys)**. These were all basic things I either saw from trailers or heard from those who saw early premieres.
And so I walked into the theatre with this in mind, and my posse and I sat and waited. We played "Previously on Twilight:" in order to recap everything we could remember from the first movie for the sake of understanding the continuity from the audience perspective. We listened to cougars behind us talk about Opra, SMeyer, and OMGSHIRTLESSJACOBSQUEE. We noted that, really, every Twihard in the theater had a Blackberry or iPhone and, upon quick peeking, I noticed they were Tweeting anticipation (really, kids? You can't just, you know, share the experience with the people you're with?!). I pondered if they would Tweet the movie (short answer: one girl did, two rows in front of us. And, she slouched down really low to try to hide the glare of the screen). And then, an hour before showtime, half my posse and I got reckless and we went on a mission to buy a magazine, that ended up just being a walk around downtown to stretch our legs and a strategic pee-break before the bathrooms exploded into maximum capacity RIGHT BEFORE THE SHOW (as they always do).
I also began texting Ashley and Dinah before the show. Dinah was at a different Twilight premiere, and sported her Team Shovel shirt. Personally, I thought it meant to just bury "the spare". Bludgeoning worked exceptionally well too, though.
And then the greatest thing happened; the lights dimmed, the projector started rolling, we covered our ears, and a defening scream came from the audience...that stopped slowly in a pathetic dwindle-out, "Oh, wait, that's not the movie...shit, let's pretend we were excited for the Lovely Bones trailer. Woooo?" I laughed.
I laughed harder still when the actual movie started and the girls were clueless about such ("Wait, is this it? I CAN'T TELL BECAUSE YOU CHANGED THE SOUNDTRACK AND THE FILTER! NO MOAR BLUUUUUUUE!").
AND THEN THE MOVIE STARTED...
Time out: maybe you're like me, where you click a cut tag without reading it because you're like "OOH! GIFS?" So, let me clarify: THESE SEAS BE FULL OF SPOILING MONSTERS.
I know I generally try to be spoiler-free, but I really feel like there's no way to give this movie a justified review without them, so srry2say, I won't be doing this the polite way with discretion, so here's your warning:
THIS IS THE REALLY SPOILER-Y PART, YOU GUISE. THIS IS WHERE I ACTUALLY TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE AND WHAT HAPPENS IN IT.
Okay, now that we're clear, time in:
Spoiler-ridden bits from the stars above:
*Which, I was all like "YESSS, VISUALS ROCK." until I saw it, and then I was all like "NOOO, NOW I'M FREAKING DIZZY." And then it just kept going, reassuring the audience that the camera [and the world] REVOLVE around Bella.
**Which, I think I would have been happier with them without being told that, as my expectations obv. became too high.
The screen is dark, and a full moon appears. A shadow comes across the moon and begins moving across its face, to show the cycle of the moon in a month. As the shadow casts, the title appears within the shadow, until the moon is nothing, or as the calender says, a "New"- O I C WUT U DID THAR!
And so my giggling begins. Also, if the lovely couple that was sitting next to me ever happens to read this, I'd just like to say I'm sorry for the compulsive giggling and occasional snort, and would like to thank you for just, you know, going with it. You rocked. For reals.
Anyway, the unmotivated romance romances on, and Edward brood-loves with all his might, and somewhere Volvo is saying, "Wait! The logo! Film the LOGO!" The previous blue filter has been taken away, and replaced with woozy camera of motion sickness. It was like Blair Witch, but the cameras were steady, somehow making the nausiated feeling worse. When it finally stopped, it was to allow the SYMBOLISM VAMPIRE BASEBALL BAT to beat us over the head with Romeo and Juliet. Foreshadowing? What's that? I don't know, and it doesn't matter. OH! LOOK! There's Taylor Lautner giving Edward the possessive/crazy eyes! You know, the ones that say "She's mine, she just doesn't know it yet"? Yeah, those.
So then Awesome Alice throws Bella a birthday party where Emo-Control Jasper literally forces her into being happy about it, until she paper-cuts herself into warm-blooded murder, and Jasper gets the noms for her sweet, sweet blood. Edward writes a song on his guitar (off-screen and not for your hearing) that goes something like "I'm so old that I ran out of self-esteem and I want to eat my girlfriend, so I'm going to dump her and move away so we can both be miserable for all of my sparkly eternity and I'll tell her so the day after her birthdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay." Or something like that. Then Edward takes forever to say goodbye to Bella and make extreme moping, and Bella goes calling for him sounding like a seagull in Finding Nemo until she gives up and takes a woodsy nap. You know, just like the book. Then Wolfy McWereson finds her, carries her back, and the rest is (as they say) suicide missions to hallucinate the boyfriend that left her while she strings along her "best friend" until Sparkles descides to kill himself (death by sparkling, not making that up) and she can save him so his ass can get kicked by a dotty old wizard vampire...lord...thing. Totes just history there, right? Like, the Shakespeare kind? I don't even know.
Look, I'd try to make it sound more dignified than that, but we all know it can't be done.
Somewhere in there, Bella makes an attempt to be social AND catatonic, because girls are just plain good at multi-tasking. So, she calls up Jessica. Now, this is really imporatant to me because Jessica is my favorite part. Always. There's something to be said for the brilliance of Anna Kendrick, especially since she's probably the only thing that makes Camp worth watching (I will hold my blasphemous tongue later, Mr. Sondheim). She was obviously my favorite part of the first movie because she was able to add depth and believability to the character Jessica (or Jessiren, as the translation to script may have made her) that just wasn't present in the book because, obviously, if it isn't about Bella, it's not worth the readers' time (I digress). The point is, she's comedically brilliant with her "That's Edward Cullen...don't even try. Like, don't waste your time..." with that look of "I know from experience". And, I'd just like to say, she did NOT disappoint. If you watch no other part of this movie, watch the "girls night out" and just listen to her in the background of Bella's hallucinations. This is where most of my snorting occured.
Well, and when we saw the painting of Carlisle with the Volturi (for backstory purposes, of course) because, did you know, this movie wants to be Harry Potter just so darn bad it hurts? It's true. I thought we had blasted to Hogwarts.
Wait, I meant to talk about Carlisle here because I was very disappointed by my lack of lulz. I specifically remember his entrance in Twilight being all like "I know I'm gorgeous. And I can kill you. I win at everything," and then proceeding to be daddy!Lestat with all of his mugs for the rest of the film. Here, he was kind of like pitiful Louis (especially in the scene where he's repairing Bella in his office after the curious incident of JASPER NOM and we see the paintings of TORTURED VAMPIRE SOULLESS ART). It disturbed me, though not nearly so much as the cougars behind me screaming when Jacob took off his shirt, and swooning every time he was shirtless on camera. I swear to all things holy, they were the loudest screamers. Also, I'm not lost on the concept that cougars are apparently hunting wolves. And okay, to be fair, it's not really the movie's fault that the audience was full of creepers.
On to the Volturi. Uhm...I liked them. I mean, Aro was completely insane and that was great, and I was orginally very skeptical of him. I mean, the promotional pictures were all so airbrushed, he looked like a Tolkien Elf, and that just wasn't okay. The movie didn't have airbrushing, and he looked more like, well, a vampire lord. And Jane. Sweet Jane. White stockings and all. That's really all I know what to say about her face-so-cute-I-want-to-pinch-her-cheeks-even-while-she-Crucios-Edward-ness. The Volturi fight scenes were possibly better than the Wolf fight scenes, but, only because they didn't try to make knocking-over-the-camera an effect. Look, Weitz, I think I get what you're going for. It's like the audience is actually in the movie watching everything that's going on, like it's Brecht on film, right? Is that it? I really hope it's that and not "naw, I just thought it'd be nifty" because, I can get behind the Brecht thing. Kind of. Well, except it wasn't covered anywhere else in the willing suspention of disbelief so, it was just out of place. And cheesey. And...dizzying. Again. Stop that. Okay, maybe I can't get behind that either.
[ETA: I can't believe I forgot this.
THE EVERY END OF THE MOVIE:
Edward: [I'll change you] on one condition. (Dramatic pause. Dramatic pause. Dramatic pause.) Marry me.
Bella: *gasp*
Screen: *cuts to black* (Dramatic pause) *roll credits*
Me: *starts laughing. loudly*
Posse: WTF, Aelf?
Me: THEY'RE TRYING TO BE TRUE BLOOD.
Posse: *starts laughing. loudly*]
But, hey, the movie was all kinds of redic. true to SMeyer's novels. You know, for what it's worth.
THE END.
[ETA: (EPILOGUE TO ADD. IT WORKS)
FROM pippie_poppins, a FOR YOUR TIME GIF:
AND